Rare Books @ NLS

Although NLS does not collect paintings, there are six hanging in our George IV Bridge building (though not in public spaces) and now you can see them all through the BBC — Your Paintings website.  They all relate in some way to the history of the Library. 

My favourite painting is this portrait of Thomas Ruddiman.  He joined the staff of the Advocates Library in 1702 and was appointed Keeper in 1730.  He retired — after almost 50 years in the job — in January 1752.  Arriving only 20 years after the first books were bought in 1682, he had a strong influence on the shaping of the Advocates Library, whose non-legal books and manuscripts were given to the nation in 1925 to help found the National Library of Scotland.

Ruddiman was a man of great energy and many talents.  Generations of school children knew his name as the author of The Rudiments of the Latin Tongue (1714) which in the 19th century was entitled Ruddiman’s Rudiments. He must surely have had this possibility in mind when he chose his original title!  You can get some idea of his reputation from the fact that James Boswell told Dr Johnson that he ‘had some intention to write the life of the learned and worthy Thomas Ruddiman’, to which Johnson replied ‘I should take pleasure in helping you to do honour to him.’ Unfortunately this never happened.

The digitisation of these paintings — 210,000 of them from over 2,800 collections all over the UK – is the work of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a registered charity set up for this purpose in 2003.

A new Treasures display opening today at the National Library of Scotland celebrates the 300th birthday of David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher although better known in his own time as historian and essayist.  It runs until 28 June.

The curators working on this display found it very close to their hearts.  In addition to his other achievements, David Hume was Keeper of the Advocates Library 1752-1757.  The foundation of the National Library in 1925 would not have happened without the generosity of the Faculty of Advocates who presented the non-legal collections of the Advocates Library to the nation to form the basis of the new National Library.  We don’t know to what extent Hume got involved in the day-to-day work of running the library, but he was certainly responsible for purchasing books to add to the collections — the collections which are now for the most part in the National Library.   Purchasing books is something that we curators do now, and so Hume is one of our direct predecessors: we carry on the work that he did.

Ex-libris written by David Hume: "Ex Libris Bibliothecae Facultatis Juridicae Edinburgi."

In the 18th century Advocates Library books all contained a hand-written statement of ownership — an “ex libris” so-called because they often began “Ex libris … (From the books …)”.  I’ve tracked down very few of these written by Hume himself.  The one shown here is a bit exceptional because it is from a copy of a book that he himself wrote, An enquiry concerning the principles of morals, published in late 1751 just before he became Keeper (January 1752).

Recently I enjoyed one of the most satisfying experiences of over 30 years working here at the Library.  Back in early January I had spent several days putting together a 9-page nomination for the inclusion of the Chepman and Myllar Prints – our precious volume containing the only-known copies of the three earliest surviving dated books printed in Scotland, by Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar in Edinburgh, 4 April, 8 April and 20 April 1508 – in UNESCO’s Memory of the World UK Register.  At an event in the House of Lords on 14 July it was announced that this nomination had been successful.  This is a new Register, and the Chepman and Myllar Prints volume is one of the first 10 items to be put on it.  I felt I had done something really worthwhile.

The date in the earliest surviving dated book printed in Scotland, 4 April 1508

Some of you will know about UNESCO’s World Heritage List which in Scotland includes places such as Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns and New Lanark.  UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme is to do with preserving and disseminating outstanding documentary heritage.  The Chepman and Myllar Prints, containing predominantly works of Scottish literature (poems by William Dunbar and Robert Henryson), mark the point at which literature, national awareness, and enterprise come together in Scotland in an utterly new form, and constitute one of Scotland’s major cultural icons. You can see facsimiles of the whole volume, and read about it, in our First Scottish Books web feature.   If you come to the Library’s shop on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh, you can buy a DVD, published by the Scottish Text Society in association with NLS, containing these facsimiles and also accompanying essays written by a team of leading experts on early Scottish literature.